Roller Skating Once a Popular Adult Pastime

A wave of popular enthusiasm followed the
invention of the modern roller skate in 1863 by James L. Plimpton
of Massachusetts. Within twenty years roller skating had become
a favorite pastime for men and women as American industry, always
ready to invest in a new fad, began producing roller skates by
the thousands.

The 1880s saw the crest of several roller
skating booms. The opening of a new skating rink in Omaha in
1883 was noted by the McCook Weekly Tribune on December
6: "The [Omaha] Republican [newspaper] says there are at
least 700 expert skaters in the city, although roller skating
was first introduced only last year." The Tribune
noted that roller skating had appeared in McCook only the month
before. The new sport proved so popular that on December 27,
1883, the McCook newspaper noted that the local roller skating
rink was the "all absorbing attraction on Christmas day."

Enthusiasm for roller skating ebbed for
a time after its tremendous popularity in the 1880s. By December
4, 1892, the Omaha Daily Bee published an article that
credited the "fickle temperament of the American people"
for the decline of several sports, including "the roller
skating craze, when every hamlet had its rink and the investor
became rich in a day as it were. But the very craze added to
wear off its novelty, and garrets and cellars now hold the discarded
rollers."

However, the "craze" was far
from dead, and a revival occurred about 1900. The editor of the
Falls City Tribune on February 5, 1904, hailed with delight
"the revival of the roller skating fad. We long for the
exciting exhilaration of the rink. We cannot dance; we cannot
play golf, but we feel that without doubt we can roller skate.
Long years ago there was a skating rink in this town and as a
boy we watched the whirling devotees of the sport glide round
and round. . . . In those days we learned to roller skate, but
just as we had mastered the art and reached a degree of skill
that enabled us to glide over the polished floor with the grace
of a swan and the charming sang froid of a well bred automobile,
the bottom dropped out of the fad and the doors of the rink were
closed."

Several years later, on February 8, 1908,
the Norfolk Weekly News-Journal noted: "Roller
skating is swinging into popularity in Norfolk in a way that
suggests the roller skating of the eighties. Only it is limited
to the boys and girls just now and the presence of miles of smooth
cement walks has given it a new turn." The News-Journal
noted that at Wayne "the fad had become so popular that
it was counted a public calamity when someone stole the town's
supply of skates."